@ariadne

Awful. Particularly since it looks like a clear majority of subsequent participants in the thread agree with him.

A tricksy thought, though: in some jurisdictions, businesses are required by law to show due diligence in avoiding the use of slavery or forced labour by their suppliers and/or "value chain partners". I wonder how the existence of a public statement like this affects the ability of those businesses either to use GNU software or to collaborate in the development of GNU software.

@ariadne The text in context, on the mailing list: https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs-devel/2026-11/msg00201.html

@ariadne

Pierre Joseph Proudhon: Everyone agrees that slavery is murder, so when I say that property is theft...

GNU guy: woah woah woah, back up.

@ariadne Occupy FOSS

@ariadne I'm not surprised by GNU taking the "freedom is slavery" position. I'm a *little* surprised they were so literal about it.

@ariadne I respect the trimming of names and emails but if anybody deserves an old fashioned pile on it's that guy.

@ariadne Jesus fucking Christ.

@ariadne@treehouse.systems if your ethics are defined by legality, then your ethics aren't worth anything, imo

this is just gross

@ariadne His name is Eli Zaretskii, we need to name fascists.

@ariadne Living by principles is hard. Moral decisions aren't supposed to make you feel warm and fuzzy.

RMS has been demonstrably problematic over the years. I hereby condemn you all for using FSF software.

Or maybe I don't.

@ariadne
The basement-dwelling douchebag who wrote this is seemingly unclear on the distinction between legality and morality.

@ariadne Somehow I should have guessed it was Eli

@ariadne it's exhausting to enjoy using emacs